The modern day babysitters

Mostly all schools have started by now. Vacations are over . Wait - do kids nowadays have vacations? For namesake they do, but mostly are constantly engaged in one activity or other. As per an article last year by Manu Joseph in livemint " In the summers, city children are made to undertake so many recreational activities, it is as though they are inmates of Tihar jail. "

Summer camps is the new in thing. The glamorous babysitter nowadays that keeps city kids engaged in vacations.
Summer camps are not a new phenomenon per se.  They existed even when I was a kid( I was born around mid 80s so you can get an idea of the time I am talking about). But that time as far as I can remember mostly kids who were interested in a particular hobby were sent to respective camps. For rest of us, summer camp meant visiting nani, cousins and playing in the building. Nowadays I see every other kid going to summer camps in vacations and tuitions during school times. Lot of preschools and daycares have this summer camp things.Half the day in summer camps , rest  half of the day put kids to sleep, caregiving is easy and simple. If the kids are put in a creche, it does not have a fun quotient. Plus it becomes evident that nobody wants to look at home.As Manu Joseph puts it "Also that everything the child does has to be laced with the sugar of entertainment. As a result, children are constantly entertained, with only the degree changing, and they have come to expect life to be ceaselessly entertaining"

This is not to say that summer camps are bad. For some they might be a necessity.  To each his own. But to constantly justify them and create a feeling of FOMO to those who don't is basically not right.

I know so many parents who justify putting their kids to tuitions and discuss this with others how they are losing out by not sending their kids there. When mostly the reason is in that time all they want to do is watch TV and have a kid free time. My cousins who are teachers have told me such examples to the extent that some parents even pick up their kids late from tuitions so that they have more peace at home.

Thankfully my daughter is too small for a this. But when I look around and see all these things , I can't but help writing about them.
Check out Manu Joseph's awesome  article on the same here - https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/YCBTfOQKrQsUMVWJMTbH4H/Schools-out-what-should-our-children-do.html

- Dhanashree
Https://dsaidso.blogspot.com